The other night I went to see Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon at the Brooklyn Public Library. I’ve seen this film quite a few times, and a few years ago, while preparing for the Redwoods shoot, I watched the Woodsman’s trek sequence over and over. You can see it here, 7:20 into the clip. It lasts almost two minutes.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XZCZHXmWbA&feature=related[/youtube]Kurosawa shot trees like no one else. (I also watched Throne of Blood many times, lots of good trees in that one, too.) If you watch the Redwoods sequence, you probably won’t find many direct references to Rashomon (I didn’t have the luxury of a large crew and tons of equipment to shoot the amazing tracking shots and I’m certainly no Kazuo Miyagawa), but somewhere in the DNA of that footage is the Woodsman’s trek.
See also: What Does This Filmmaker Read Before Shooting a Bunch of Old Trees?